Book review: Mein Kampf

How Hitler's antisemitism evolved and what it teaches us

Adolf Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf is arguably the most important published work of World War II, but how many of us have read it? Yet this book lays out Hitler’s concept of “the Jewish peril,” his belief that communism and Judaism are the great evils of the world and his argument for Lebensraum. It provides insight into the mind of the most infamous dictator and outlines how antisemitism and genocidal hatred evolve. It is therefore a valuable tool for spotting such patterns in political movements today.

Most folks know that mein kampf is German for ‘my struggle,’ but few know what this means. It’s not a reference to Hitler’s struggle for political power. Incredibly, it refers to his struggle against antisemitism. Therefore the books also tells us how people become radicalized toward racist violence. I’m going to focus this review on chapter 2, “Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna,” where Hitler describes how he lost the titular struggle and went from being tolerant toward Jews to becoming an antisemite. He begins by believing antisemitism would lead to the hell of medieval barbarity.

In the Jew I still saw only a man who was of a different religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I was against the idea that he should be attacked because he had a different faith. And so I considered that the tone adopted by the anti-Semitic Press in Vienna was unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people. The memory of certain events which happened in the middle ages came into my mind, and I felt that I should not like to see them repeated.

Hitler’s views of the Jewish community are informed by people-watching on the streets of Vienna and his gradual turn toward right-wing media. It may be a dishonest rhetorical device designed to make the reader think he became an antisemite through measured reflection, but he emphasizes that he did not reach that conclusion easily.

My ideas about anti-Semitism changed also in the course of time, but that was the change which I found most difficult. It cost me a greater internal conflict with myself, and it was only after a struggle between reason and sentiment that victory began to be decided in favour of the former.

It is soon revealed that this internal struggle centers on ideas of national identity as Hitler begins to wonder whether Jewish people, who behave and dress differently from other Germans, are therefore German at all.

I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously; but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?

We can already see that for Hitler, this was not a question of the fundamental humanity of Jewish people but of determining to what degree they were German, and in his mind, that means assimilating into traditional German culture. Although as we shall see, he also judges Jews when they do assimilate, perhaps even more harshly. That is what suggests to me that his supposed internal struggle is either a lie he tells to make his antisemitism seem like the conclusion of a careful moral debate, or a lie he tells himself to justify his own psychopathy.

In her 1950 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argues that what makes Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism unique from other dictatorships is modern imperialism and antisemitism. She explains that emerging nationalist sentiments were constructed in opposition to a perceived Jewish threat, and we can see this kind of logic unfold in Hitler’s confessional as his antisemitism emerges from the question he asking here—just how German are German Jews?

To find an answer, he describes turning to books and even antisemitic pamphlets, but is turned off by the racist nature and hostile tone of such pamphlets and returns to his belief that antisemitism is wrong. Yet he continues to discuss how Jewish people differ from other Germans and mentions how “a great movement, called Zionism, arose among them” that aimed “to assert the national character of Judaism,” adding that Zionism was popular in Vienna. Not only are Jews living apart from normative German culture, but some are asserting their own culture, while others condone this assertion by their silence. This is where his fears of the “Jewish peril” begin.

To outward appearances it seemed as if only one group of Jews championed this movement, while the great majority disapproved of it, or even repudiated it. But an investigation of the situation showed that those outward appearances were purposely misleading … there was no real rift in their internal solidarity. This fictitious conflict between the Zionists and the Liberal Jews soon disgusted me.

In modern political discourse, we’ve heard similar arguments. For instance, why don’t moderate Muslims denounce radical Muslims? If they do not do so, are they not condoning Islamic violence? The difference is, Hitler becomes convinced the two groups are colluding and his suspicion rapidly fuels his racism. In the next passage he compares Jews who have so thoroughly assimilated to German society that they are not readily identifiable as being “like a maggot in a putrescent body,” yet as we have seen, he also criticizes those who do not assimilate as being not really German.

He then goes about trying to uncover assimilated Jews, and talks about seeing the names of leading figures in the media, art, literature and theater and realizing that these are Jewish names. But instead of concluding Jewish culture is a thriving one that produces great minds or that discrimination has forced Jews from other walks of life into the media and the arts, he instead reacts by calling them “a moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected … worse than the Black Plague of long ago.”

This chapter therefore not only gives an outline of the evolution of antisemitism and genocidal hatred, but conspiratorial thinking as well. Hitler identifies a distinction within the Jewish community between liberal and Zionist Jews, and notices Jewish figures in the media and arts, but confuses coincidence for collusion. He talks about how the more he looks for signs of Jewish presence, the more he finds it. This is what psychologists call the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency illusion. When you buy a car and suddenly notice lots of other people have the same make and model, you can almost fool yourself into believing the car suddenly became popular when it fact you simply never noticed all the other ones before.

This tells us Hitler’s hatred includes common flaws in rational thinking. Most folks know better than to apply Baader-Meinhof to ethnic groups, but you only need to put people in positions of desperation, where many will begin to seek scapegoats, and politicians can then take advantage of these features of our psychology. We are ever at risk of forgetting that the threat of genocidal thinking lies just beneath the surface of human nature. This is why there can never be enough movies about the Holocaust.

Another important point is that Hitler’s thinking evolves hand-in-hand with his growing mistrust of liberal mainstream media, which he feels always praises certain minority groups while unfairly criticizing the majority group.

The lesser grew my respect for that Press which I formerly admired. Its style became still more repellent and I was forced to reject its ideas as entirely shallow and superficial … I saw the Liberal policy of that Press in another light. Its dignified tone in replying to the attacks of its adversaries and its dead silence in other cases now became clear to me as part of a cunning and despicable way of deceiving the readers. Its brilliant theatrical criticisms always praised the Jewish authors and its adverse, criticism was reserved exclusively for the Germans.

Hitler then talks about Jewish victim mentality, disrespect for officials, public protests and lack of regard for historical figures, and it is startling to note that these talking points, as well as the ones noted above, continue to be electrifying issues today.

They were dissatisfied with their lot and cursed the fate which had hit them so hard. They hated their employers … Often they used abusive language against the public officials … They made public protests against the cost of living and paraded through the streets ... what was impossible to understand was the boundless hatred they expressed against their own fellow citizens, how they disparaged their own nation, mocked at its greatness, reviled its history and dragged the names of its most illustrious men in the gutter.

He concludes that German Jews must therefore not be German, because true Germans would not criticize their own culture. He finishes the story of his descent into antisemitism by describing the manner in which Jewish people argue, and claims that this above all other factors is the reason he embraces antisemitism.

The disastrous effects of the Marxist Theory and its application in practice became evident … I realized that the Jew uses language for the purpose of dissimulating his thought or at least veiling it, so that his real aim cannot be discovered by what he says but rather by reading between the lines. This knowledge was the occasion of the greatest inner revolution that I had yet experienced. From being a soft-hearted cosmopolitan I became an out-and-out anti-Semite.

This too is a point often made today with regard to how Marxist liberals use deceptive motte-and-bailey arguments to move the Overton window. At the top, I said this chapter can help us identify fascist trends in modern political movements. With that in mind, consider Hitler’s points of contention and tell me if they sound familiar. He lists the mainstream liberal media, proselytizing liberal art—which today would be woke movies, Marxism, politically correct language, ethnic groups that do not assimilate to the nation’s traditional culture, disrespect for authority such as police, anti-capitalist protests and disrespect for controversial historical figures.

It’s amazing that every one of these issues remains a major talking point today. To be clear, I am not saying that conservatives are therefore like Hitler when they complain about these things. I myself have complained about more than one of them. What I am saying is, we are struggling over the same fault lines that turned Germany into a fascist hellscape and the passages above show that the descent into genocidal rhetoric is frighteningly familiar and easy, and rests upon common flaws in moral reasoning.

The tendency to think of our political opponents as un-American is an ever-present danger. Thankfully, the solution is already built into American society with the belief that there are a hundred different ways to be American. The trick is, remembering that this applies to a hundred different areas of life, including politics.